


More Wolf Than Woman

by stealing-jasons-job (changingthefairy_tale)



Category: The 100 (TV), The 100 Series - Kass Morgan
Genre: Bellarke, Brief mentions of suicide, Canon Universe, Character Study, Clarke learning how to love herself, F/M, Healing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-11
Updated: 2020-06-11
Packaged: 2021-03-04 07:20:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,766
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24669784
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/changingthefairy_tale/pseuds/stealing-jasons-job
Summary: Some days I am more wolf than woman, and I am still learning how to stop apologizing for my wild. -Nikita Gill______________Or the one where Clarke learns how to accept herself as she is. <3
Relationships: Bellamy Blake/Clarke Griffin, Clarke Griffin & John Murphy, Octavia Blake & Clarke Griffin
Kudos: 59





	More Wolf Than Woman

Bellamy once told me, "who we are and who we have to be to survive are two very different things." It took me a long time to reconcile that he wasn't entirely right.

—

When we were on earth, working side-by-side to keep our people alive, I used that sentence as a crutch. It was validation for all of the horrible things I'd done, all of the horrible things I _had_ to do.

"I am become death, destroyer of worlds." I said those words to Bellamy as we watched the smoke rise after we decimated a group of grounders crossing that bridge. And I let them consume me.

If I wanted my people to survive, I had to become the darkness. I had to become death.

I killed my guard to escape Anya. It hurt me to do, but I felt it was necessary. Then I helped Raven turn the dropship into an even bigger bomb than the bridge. And then I closed the door on the two people I cared about most on the ground. All painful, all necessary.

And my people survived. Even Finn and Bellamy.

It became easier after that, embracing the darkness, inviting it inside to make a home in my chest.

I did what I had to do to escape Mt. Weather. And then I did what I had to do to get Lexa to help save us. At the time, I had believed Lexa was right when she told me my love for Bellamy, for the others, was weakness.

"Your love for him is admirable, Clarke," she said late one night in her tent. "But it will also be the thing that gets him killed. It'll be the thing that gets all of us killed."

And so I did what I had to do yet again — sending Bellamy in undercover, letting the bombs fall in TonDC without warning them, killing one of Cage's snipers, sending Emmerson as a warning. And I was good at it, letting the darkness in so that I could become someone else to help my people survive.

The impossible decisions, they stopped becoming so impossible. The pain I felt started to feel more like the steel keeping me upright.

_Who we are and who we have to be to survive are two very different people._

I repeated it in my head as we pulled that lever in Mt. Weather, and it was a mantra I held onto so hard it became almost a prayer in the months following. Every bounty hunter I killed. Every grounder I stole from. Every time I evaded Bellamy's attempts to find me.

It was during my time on the run that I finally realized how wrong I had been before Mt. Weather.

The darkness wasn't something I let in from the cold. It was something I let out, something that had always been inside of me waiting for the opportunity to unleash itself on the world. Wanheda, the commander of death.

Lexa's death, A. L. I. E., the nightblood experiments, the City of Light, priamfaya. More life or death decisions. More fighting. More darkness.

"They'll thank you one day," Roan told me. I didn't believe him at the time, I didn't think I deserved it anyhow.

The death wave should have been the end of it. Finally, the commander of death could have peace. I did what I had to do one last time so that my people could survive. My purpose was finished, my fight was over.

Apparently the universe and whatever cruel gods control it didn't agree with me. Weeks of sickness while my body learned how to metabolize the heightened radiation. Months of wondering why in the hell I was still alive, wondering if the bunker had made it, if Bellamy and the others had made it.

I almost ended it once, you know. No food, no water, no one else in that forsaken wasteland. But then I found Shallow Valley, Madi.

After meeting Madi, I decided that was my chance to do better. It was my chance to honor Jasper and Finn and my father. It was my chance to earn this peaceful life I'd been given. Sure it was lonely at times. That's part of the reason I continued to talk to Bellamy on that busted radio every day.

"Tell me another story about Bellamy and the dropship," Madi asked one night as we looked up at the stars.

"Why do you always want to hear stories about Bellamy? I thought Octavia was your favorite?" I poked her nose, a soft smile on my face.

"Yeah, but he's _your_ favorite. It's why you always call him on the radio."

If I'm being honest with myself, loneliness was really only a small reason I continued to talk to him. I think I had hoped he could hear me, could hear that I was alive and raising Madi and being a better person than I was before. I had managed to lock the darkness in a box, hidden so well from view that I almost forgot it was even still there.

It wasn't the life I had planned for myself, but it was peace and happiness and joy. I would get to see Madi grow up, telling her stories of the people I loved most. And one day maybe we could get that bunker door open. Hell, maybe one day the others would come back down and I could finish reconciling for all of the darkness I'd unleashed our first round on the ground.

But then that damn ship dropped out of the sky and threatened my daughter... and I opened the box.

More fighting, more war, more darkness.

_Who we are and who we have to be to survive are two very different people._

I started to hate that phrase. I hated what I had justified by saying it. I hated the darkness. I hated myself.

I didn't need Josie to remind me of it all, really. I didn't need her to give me a front-row seat to all of my sins. As if I could forget. As if Raven and Murphy and the others would let me forget.

But she tortured me with the memories all the same. What was worse was that no one seemed to notice I was gone. A psychopath had taken hold of my body, but apparently that was just business as usual.

I would have let her end it. I thought about it, wrestled with the idea. She wasn't wrong — I was a monster, a killer, a danger to the very few people left alive that I loved. But then Bellamy's voice broke through, asking me to fight, telling me that he needed me.

_Who we are and who we have to be to survive are two very different people._

I survived.

At some point, the darkness consumes you so much that it becomes the default. The light starts to be what lives inside the box rather than the reverse. I was tired of the darkness, and I wanted it gone.

So I settled with Madi in a house away from Sanctum's compound. It used to be Russell's, and I didn't argue when Raven called it my spoils from the war. Let her hate me, let them all hate me.

I thought maybe if I stayed away, if I tried to recreate the slice of paradise I had on earth with Madi, I would be okay. Maybe the light would start to overtake the darkness lodged in my heart. Maybe the others would start to forgive me. Maybe I would forgive myself.

Once more, I built a life away from the others. Madi went to school, and I started a small farm to keep myself busy. I started drawing again. People would visit — Bellamy, Octavia, Diyoza, even Gaia occasionally.

It wasn't happiness, per se. But it seemed like the start of peace, and I could live with that. No more surviving, finally actually living.

But that lasted less than a year. Turns out the religious cult, battle-scarred warriors, and old-earth prisoners weren't getting along. Shocker.

"They need a leader," Bellamy pleaded, eyes tired. He, Miller and Indra all came to see me at the farmhouse, saying I was the only person who could take charge of all three groups.

"When I'm in charge, people die, remember? Pick someone else," I'd pleaded right back, trying to make him understand why I couldn't do this again.

But the Sancumites still saw me as a Prime, Wonkru still whispered old myths of Wanheda whenever I passed, and for some unknown reason, I was the only person Diyoza (and therefore the rest of Eligus) trusted.

"You're our only hope at surviving this," Indra had said pointedly, breaking the staredown between Bellamy and me.

Dammit, I was so tired of just surviving.

We pulled Sanctum together by the skin of our teeth, quelling riots and implementing new safety measures. New compounds were built for Wonkru and Eligus. Diyoza did her part to keep the prisoners from acting out. Indra and Octavia did the same for Wonkru.

It was grueling work, trying to keep the darkness at bay. Every time a fight broke out, every time something broke, every hard decision, every snide remark from Raven and Murphy.

Eventually, I screamed at them both. It was cathartic, to finally let out all of the pent up anger I felt at the both of them. To be able to tell a tearful Raven about the blood on her hands. To be able to look Murphy in the eye and tell him that he would have died if not for me and my impossible decisions.

Murphy actually ended up apologizing. Raven didn't, not that I expected her to.

I waited for the guilt to come after, but it didn't this time. The darkness was out of the box again, and I was done trying to stuff it back down. If they wanted me to be the bad guy, I could be the bad guy.

It was surprisingly Octavia who was the first to help me come to terms with the darkness inside of me.

She sat down across from me one morning at breakfast. I just stared at her for a solid minute, confused at why she was acting as if that was a normal everyday occurrence — two murderous former leaders sharing breakfast.

We didn't speak the entire meal. Nor did we the next day when she did the same thing. And the day after that. She finally spoke as they were leaving the dining hall the fourth morning.

"I used to judge you and the decisions you were forced to make on behalf of the 100." She said it as a simple face, without malice.

"Why are you telling me this?"

"Because I get it now," she shrugged. "Skairipa, then Bloodreina... I get it."

With that, she walked off, leaving me somewhat stunned. But from then on we always sat together at breakfast. We'd talk, too — sometimes about our days, sometimes about old memories or nightmares, sometimes about how we were worried about Bellamy not taking well enough care of himself.

It was nice, to have a female friend again. Someone else who understood the darkness in a way the rest of our people never would.

Eventually, Murphy joined in, too.

If you had asked me over a century ago — when were all just a bunch of juvenile delinquents trying to survive on Earth — who my closest friends would one day be, I would never have guessed the hotheaded Blake siblings and that fucking asshole John Murphy would top the list.

It's together with this core group that we learn little by little to embrace who we are and the things we've done.

_Who we are and who we have to be to survive are two very different people._

No, who I am helped me survive. And I was finally done apologizing for it.

Yes, I made mistakes. Too many mistakes to count. But those mistakes are part of who I am. The darkness, in all its glory and its wrath, enabled me to make those impossible decisions. It allowed me to save my people.

I learned to stare straight into the black abyss inside myself, to face my demons as a part of me to be trained and understood rather than feared and locked away.

My darkness stopped being ruthlessness fighting against mercy and compassion. It stopped being the smoke burning down the world. Instead, it became the nighttime sky that complimented the light.

And through it all, Bellamy was right beside me.

At first in small ways. He would stop by throughout the day with food, making sure I ate. He would be the unbendable supporter at my side, defending me when I couldn't do it for myself.

When the nightmares come, he holds me until fall back asleep. And when his panic attacks show no mercy, I hold him until he can breathe again.

It's these stolen moments in the dead of night that finally bridge the divide that's been between us since I watched him fly into space over one hundred years ago.

Sharing a bed to comfort each other became sharing our late night thoughts, our hopes for the futures and fears of our pasts catching up with us.

I finally told him about almost ending it, both during the months after Praimfaya and during the first eclipse on Sanctum. He finally told me about poisoning his sister and the self-loathing he's been carrying with him from even before he pulled the trigger to earn his way onto the dropship.

"Sometimes I wonder who I would have been if the Ark had never malfunctioned," I whispered into the darkness one night after a particularly gruesome nightmare featuring a bleeding Wells telling me I was the reason he died. "Would I have lived a boring life, no impossible decisions or body trail behind me?"

"The ground forced you to take on responsibilities no one person should have to carry. But the ground did not change who you are at your core," he whispers back, arm tightening around me. "You are Clarke Griffin — a compassionate leader who will do anything to protect the people she loves. In every version of this life, that would never change."

I fell asleep that night to his steady heartbeat under my cheek and his lips pressed to my temple.

One morning, I realized I'd woken up in his arms more times than not in the past week.

The first time he kissed me, it felt like coming home. It wasn't explosions and wildfires. No, it was a steady rain pour marking the end of a summer drought. Passionate, life-affirming — but healing.

—

It's been almost five years since that first kiss. Madi is practically grown these days, spending more time off on her own adventures than with us. I'm forever grateful she was finally able to be a kid, grow up alongside friends her age without worrying about just surviving.

My found family has grown. What started out as breakfast with Octavia, Murphy, and Bellamy has transformed into a village of loved ones — Miller, Jackson, Gabriel, Emori, Diyoza, Indra, and Gaia.

Raven and Echo never quite forgave me, but that's okay. I learned to forgive myself.

Bellamy and I still fall asleep curled around each other. We are each other's home, a safe harbor in the storms life continues to throw at us.

Leading is still hard, and the nightmares still take their toll. I still cry every year on the anniversary of my parents' and Wells' deaths. His panic attacks still render him immobile after particularly stressful weeks.

We have learned to be forgiving with ourselves, but the scars of our pasts still mark our bodies like the constellations do the Sanctum night sky.

After the tough days, I remind him that he is more than the weight of his responsibilities. That he matters as Bellamy, as himself. Not just as a leader or a brother, a partner or a friend, or even a lover.

He reminds me that I am more than the weight of my choices. That the scars that mar my skin are not something to hide, but something to be proud of. That he loves me because of who I am, not despite. 

_Who we are and who we have to be to survive are two very different people._

I've learned that isn't true. No, the darkness within us that helped us survive does not diminish the light shining through while we learn to truly live.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you liked this! <3 It's definitely a little different than my normal, but I just love the complexity of Clarke as a character and how she evolves throughout the show. I feel like her story at its core is heartbreaking, especially as they continue to show how much internal hate she has for herself. I'm in love with this idea that she can eventually come to terms with who she is and understand that mistakes don't mean she doesn't deserve happiness and that darkness doesn't mean she can't also be light. 
> 
> Tell me what you guys thought. Comments and kudos are always appreciated. <3 
> 
> ___ 
> 
> As a side note, I'm participating in the BellarkeFic for BLM initiative! If you submit a prompt (or a request for a chapter update on one of my WIPs) to me on Tumblr along with confirmation of a donation toward the Black Lives Matter movement (any organization supporting the cause — not just BLM itself), I will write the fic and match your donation. If you have any questions or want to submit a prompt, please check out my Tumblr page for this initiative: <https://changingthefairy-tale.tumblr.com/bellarkefic-for-blm>. Thank you guys so much! :)


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